


Silk

by ChemicalChance



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Multi, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-10-13
Updated: 2012-12-07
Packaged: 2017-11-16 06:14:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 17,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/536388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChemicalChance/pseuds/ChemicalChance
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Jon is left with his mother, Ned, having abandoned his son, feels he's lost moral authority because of it, and Robb and Theon are brought to King's Landing because Ned is worried about what the boys might get up to without him around. Dragging themselves home one night, Robb and Theon encounter a whore being attacked. Robb, hedonistic though he is, still has enough of a sense of Stark honour to intervene. Theon thinks his best friend is criminally stupid. Falling-in-love-with-the-whore!trope ensues.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> So for those of you familiar with the other serial I'm working on, that's still happening, slowly but surely. This idea actually sort of spawned from me trying to write it in a roundabout sort of way. Also I recently began college, and while I'd like to write more, Plato and the structure of the human brain beckon. This, however, is much less ambitious and rather more porny, and so should be easier to write. It's pretty damned cliched, but there you have it.

Robb will always maintain, truthfully, that on the night they met, the night he saved Jon from a pair of drunken rapers, he did it out of a sense of moral duty. He and Theon had been walking through an alley on their way back from an inn, more sober than usual with the knowledge of some courtly event in the morning, and Robb had noticed the struggle before Jon’s attackers had noticed him. Robb only had the vaguest impression of dark curls and a slight frame, a face and eyes cloaked in shadow. Robb would have defended anyone, male or female, young or old; his father might despair of his hedonism but he’d still been raised to protect those who could not protect themselves. It was only serendipity that it was Jon he came upon that evening.

Robb knew why his father had brought him and Theon along with the girls to King’s Landing. By all rights he should have been holding Winterfell in his father’s stead, but his father had prevented that (to Robb’s relief, if he were truthful) with a vague tale of how the future Warden of the North and Lord of the Iron Islands should have a taste of southron politics. The truth was more like this: he feared what sort of trouble Robb and Theon might get up to with him and most of the household gone. Robb was not _wild,_ per se, not quite like Theon, and he did indeed have a strong moral code – but that moral code, with some guidance from Theon, had not yet evolved to preclude the prospect of drinking and whoring. Not that his father knew about the whoring, Robb did his best to prevent that, for his father had always gotten tight-lipped and uncomfortable at the mere mention of whores. 

But his father had little time to try and control them in his new role as King’s Hand, and Jory Cassel was easy enough to evade. Bringing them to the city had only given Robb and Theon a whole new world of trouble to get into. Robb did not mean to become a wastrel, not like the Imp, but he was young yet, he knew someday there would be expectations of him that would deny him the chance of such things, and so he felt he had the right to some boyhood self-indulgence. The king, for what it was worth, seemed to agree.

And so Robb and Theon had been making their way back from yet another night of such revelry when they came upon Jon. In truth, the very first thing that Robb ever noticed about Jon was nothing so sordid as the round curve of his arse or the swollen pink of his lips, though that would come soon after. The first thing that Robb noticed about Jon was that he was a scrappy little bastard, lithe and quick and nigh elusive as a shadow, but he was outnumbered, untrained, and unarmed. He slipped out of one man’s grasp adroitly, slamming his heel into the other’s instep, at the same time as he levelled a blow at the man he’d evaded. But he was losing ground; he’d have his back to the wall soon enough, and the faint, controlled flash of cold fear Robb saw in those stormy grey eyes as he was backed into the lamplight was all Robb had to see before his mind was made up.

Beside him, seeing the resolve slip into the set of his shoulders, Theon issued a long-suffering groan. “ _Stark,_ ” he said sharply. “Don’t get involved. For all you know, he deserves it.”

The boy eluded another grab at his shoulders, but now his back really was to the wall, and one of the men, a great, hulking aurochs who swayed with drink, began pawing at his clothes. If it had been uncertain before, now their intent was clear. Robb shot Theon a cursory look over his shoulder - _no one deserves that_ \- then barely had time to see the boy spit in his face before he was surging forward with a shout and the ring of his steel coming free from his scabbard. With a sigh that was audible even over the red haze of anger enveloping Robb’s senses, Theon drew his own blade and followed.

Robb wasn’t yet full grown, he knew, but he was a stocky youth and well trained besides, and though the thug nearest to him, smaller than his companion, whirled, he did it a heartbeat too late and Robb subdued him easily, with a knee to the ribs and an arm thrown about his gut. With him thus restrained, Robb pressed the flat of his sword to the man’s throat. Theon stormed in shortly afterwards, not touching the other man but girding himself for battle, standing with his sword poised and a menacing air pervading his frame. The man who had been pawing at the boy rounded, similarly coiled for a fight, but as large as he was he was armed with no more than a dagger, and he paled at the sight of Robb’s blade marking his companion’s skin. The slight boy sensed his advantage and threw an elbow to his would-be raper’s ribs and scuttled back along the wall, breathing hard. 

“That’s quite enough of that,” Robb rasped, low and dangerous. “You’ll be on your way now, or I’ll see you don’t live to regret it.”

“Stay out of the way, whelp,” the large man snarled, his tone at odds with the sudden pallor of his face.

“I can promise you you’re outmatched,” Theon said lazily, wearing his too-familiar smirk, “and unfortunately for you, my friend here has an unfortunate desire to protect the maidenly virtue of strangers. Fool though he might be, I don’t mean to let him come to harm for it, so yes, I’d advise you to slink off now.”

There was an instant of tension, rage flaring in both of the assailants’ eyes, before the big man put his hands up. “Why a primped up little lordling like you’d risk yourself for a boy-whore is beyond me, but aye, we’ll be on our way.” Theon moved in on him then, putting the tip of his sword to the small of the man’s back and following him as he stepped away. When Theon had put a safe distance between the three of them and the big lout, Robb released the other man with a harsh shove. Still prideful, it seemed, neither of the thugs made any great haste to leave, walking and cursing betwixt themselves. Neither Robb nor Theon turned their backs on the men for a good long while, ‘til after the men were out of sight. It was only then Robb allowed himself to look back at the boy they’d saved.

His breath caught in his throat. The men assaulting him had called him a boy-whore, and though Robb was sure he was immediately condemned to the worst of the seven hells for it, his first thought was only that he wished it was true. He was beautiful; he was every bit as finely muscled as his grace had suggested. The flickering lantern light cast dancing shadows over a carved profile framed in lustrous black curls, plush lips were open in a quick pant, and his eyes…

His eyes were narrowed in a glare, piercing silver-grey burning hotly at Robb, and his brow was knit. If it was true that he was a whore, he was a bolder one than Robb had ever known, and Robb was no stranger to whores. Whores did not look noblemen in the eye, and certainly not with such disdain.

“Why did you do that?” the boy demanded sharply, still glaring at him. He looked like a feral creature fit to pounce. “I could have handled myself.”

“Yes,” Theon said snidely, “it rather looked it.”

It was only then Robb noticed the tremor in the boy’s tightly balled hands, with a reprimand of, “ _Theon._ He’s been through enough.”

“And he would have been through worse if not for your idiot virtue,” Theon pointed out. “The least the little ingrate can do is…”

“Enough,” Robb grit out again. “Let’s put you through that and see how you behave afterwards, shall we?” Forcing a smile, he offered the boy his hand. “I’m Robb,” he said, knowing it wasn’t terribly wise, not when he knew he’d already betrayed his birth, but it was a common enough name for boys his age, born on the tail end of the king’s rebellion.

The boy eyed it distrustfully, and then scanned Robb’s face. He must have been given some comfort by whatever he found there, for his brow went up slightly in surprise and he took Robb’s hand, shaking it. Robb did his best to ignore the tremble he still felt in the boy’s grip; it only made him want to hunt the rapers down and teach them a proper lesson. 

The boy had granted him the courtesy of a handshake, but it didn’t seem he meant to give up his name. He looked Robb and Theon up and down, and said almost disdainfully, “And what exactly are you doing in these parts at this hour? No, don’t answer that, it’s bloody obvious, but haven’t milords got a fretful mother waiting up for them in some manse somewhere?”

“I’m grown enough to not cling to my mother’s skirts,” Robb retorted, before Theon could come out with something worse. “I’m probably older than you. And anyway, oughtn’t you to be at home, yourself?”

“Back to the brothel, you mean?” the boy replied, spitting it like a challenge. 

Robb tried to hide the fact that his mouth went dry and his palms went damp at the confirmation; nor did he want to inadvertently chase him off, so he said, too coolly, “Yes. Wherever you’re off to. We’ll take you; I’d not see you face those pricks again.”

To Robb’s surprise, the boy let out a peal of laughter at that, eyes sparkling with mirth. He looked Robb up and down again, more slowly. “No,” he said evenly, “you won’t. It’s only just up the way.” He turned then, began walking away, and just as Robb was about to call after him he peered back over his shoulder. “Just up the way,” he repeated. “And thank you for your ever-so-gallant but entirely unneeded help. Oh, and milord?” he continued, putting an emphasis on the word that made it seem like an obscenity, making Robb’s gut twist. “They call me Silk.” 

Robb had gaped after him for several seconds, watching his hips sway, before realizing it had been an invitation. The boy wanted his coin, sure enough, but somehow, Robb couldn’t find it in him to care. Theon’s elbow driving into his ribs broke his reverie.

“Seven hells, Stark, snap out of it,” he said irritably. “He’s pretty but what of it? So are many of them, and he’s mouthier than a whore has any right to be. I know you fancy yourself something of a white knight, but trust me: your whores should be strangers outside of the inn and the bedchamber, and that one never will be, now. Find yourself something pretty to stick your prick in and move on. But tomorrow. We’ve got to get back before your father flays us.”


	2. Shame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Theon is right and Robb sorely wishes he wasn't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...So, um, I'm having a remarkable bitch of a time getting AO3 to properly space these paragraphs, even HTMLing by hand. I'm going to leave this up because I already posted it accidentally and it's not unreadable, but I'm really sorry for the formatting issues, which will hopefully cease to exist soon.  
>  EDIT: And I fixed it. That was weird.

The next day was a torment, even though Robb wasn’t suffering the remnants of the previous night’s drink as he might usually have been. He’d managed to make up for it by barely sleeping at all, half because he was used to falling into drink-sodden oblivion and half because he’d been kept awake, not even by desire, not really; he’d only been too distracted to find repose. After an evening of short, fitful spurts of sleep, he’d finally truly fallen asleep sometime around the sun’s first blush, when the sky had begun to change from deep blue to the faintly glowing purple-pink of the morning. He reckoned he’d slept soundly for an hour or two before he woke to Arya leaping atop him, giggling and telling him that he’d slept in and their father would be cross if he didn’t present himself soon. Robb had never had it in him to be unduly wroth with either of his sisters, even though he sat bolt upright with a wince, shifting her away from the unwelcome hardness that he had awoken with before she could encounter it and deflecting her with a kiss to her forehead. His unwanted state might only be a product of adolescence, and his sister might be too young to even notice, but there were some things too horrifying to bear thinking of, and either of his sisters asking what precisely was wrong with him when he was in that state was decidedly one of them.  
  
Whatever the cause for his restless evening, it did not seem he managed to wear it well. He’d been attired and groomed for court – for the life of him, he still couldn’t remember what the nature of the bloody event was, nor could he bring himself to care; he stood upright and knelt when it was dictated – but it didn’t stop his father’s eyes from following him with disapproval, nor Theon’s from following him with a wry amusement. It certainly did not stop the king from clapping him heartily on the back and declaring, “Ah, now there’s a lad after my own heart! You may greet the morning red-eyed, but you rise to greet it all the same! Ned, you could learn something from this boy of yours!”  
  
Robb had nearly had to bite his lip bloody to clamp down on something that might have been either an exasperated scowl or a smirk when he responded only with, “Your Grace.”  
  
Somehow it didn’t seem fair that one of the few times he was no physically the worse for wear, the way everyone was assuming he was, but what was Robb to say to correct them? There was nothing to say that wouldn’t have intensified his father’s reprove and Theon’s amusement, nothing to say that wouldn’t have lost him the king’s almost fraternal approval. It would not shock Robb to learn that Robert Baratheon had won the favour of many a pretty whore in a calculated act of gallantry – which Robb’s had not been, truly – but he was equally certain none of them had been pretty young boys, not even when the king had been a boy himself.  
  
Robb would have liked to claim that he’d not been driven to such pitiful distraction by his brief encounter with the boy who insisted on calling himself “Silk”; indeed, he did not want to believe he had been… but unless he was to believe he’d become dependent on drink to sleep, what else was there to think? He drank more evenings than not, but until now he’d still managed to sleep well enough on the evenings that he’d slipped under without liquid assistance.  
  
He’d only just come to the conclusion that he was simply thinking about the whole thing entirely too much when Theon caught him by the elbow and cornered him. The crowd was beginning to disperse, and Robb and Theon were like to be left to their own devices for the rest of the day, the time that usually would have been spent on lessons or in the practice yard already evaporated in a show of formality, so when Theon pressed him back against the wall they gained enough privacy for Theon to opine, “Gods, Stark, but you are a pitiful son of a whore.”  
  
Robb glared. “You will not—“  
  
Theon sighed. “You know bloody well I wasn’t talking about your mother. My point still stands. Unless you’ve been stricken with some feminine melancholy over the evening, then you’re thinking with your cock, and, more the fool you, it is driving you to distraction.”  
“I didn’t sleep well,” Robb replied tersely. “No more and no less. You know I hate this sort of pomp and circumstance.”  
  
“As do I. And yet somehow, no one whispered behind their hands today about what a pitiful state I was in. Go see your whore, Stark,” Theon advised sagely, “but be sure you get it out of your system. It will do you no good to make more of last evening than it was. He wasn’t only putting on a show of pride when he told you he wished you hadn’t stepped in. His kind get attacked, sometimes, and whores don’t like to feel they owe anyone anything.”  
  
“And he doesn’t,” Robb said simply. “You talk, Greyjoy, but _you_ would no more have let them harm him than I.” He did believe that much. For all Theon’s bravado, Robb’s father had had more of an influence on him that.  
  
“Saving him did him no favours,” Theon retorted. “That small and that pretty, it’s hardly better than a maid traipsing about at night unarmed. A sore arse and a busted lip might have taught him a badly needed lesson.”  
  
Robb crossed his arms over his chest and set his jaw. “I won’t speak of this anymore.”  
  
Theon grinned. “Nor do you need to. Just go fuck the stupid little waif and get it over with.”

***  
Theon was uncharacteristically absent after supper that night. Robb made a half-hearted effort at looking for him, but checking his usual haunts yielded no results. With each successive failure to locate his companion, Robb grew more irate, more certain that Theon’s disappearance was a calculation on his friend’s part.  
  
But perhaps Theon had been right, damn him. Perhaps he’d merely been stricken with an itch he needed to scratch, and if that was so, wasn’t it better to simply get it over with?  
  
Whether it was true or not, it was not long after that he found himself standing at the door of the brothel the boy had indicated the previous evening, still indecisive. He was nearly hit with the door when a patron pushed it open to leave. The man glared at him, Robb spluttered an apology, and slipped in the door with burning cheeks. No one paid him any undue attention – he didn’t know why he’d expected any different – and he made his way to the bar. He knew the nature of brothels well enough to be able to pick out the proprietress standing proud behind it. She was a handsome woman with a steely set to her shoulders; she was too old to be properly beautiful any more, by whores’ standards, but her grey-streaked blonde hair looked as soft as cornsilk. It would have been vibrant, when she was young, it was still vibrant now, and she had full lips and a charming button nose dusted with freckles below a striking pair of amber gold eyes. Those eyes fixed on him in an uncomfortable approximation of Silk’s unblinking, unwelcoming glare the night before and Robb’s voice came out in a croak.  
  
“I…” he tried, only to be cut off.  
  
“You’re new,” the woman said, as if she misliked the fact. Her voice was not quite cold, but it was the furthest thing from accommodating. “Who told you to come here?”  
  
Robb flushed again. “One of your…” he coughed, lowering his voice. “One of your boys,” he managed. “He was only a little strip of a thing. Dark hair, pretty face…”  
  
The proprietress’ mouth twisted into a wry little smile. “That’ll be Satin or Silk, sure enough. Silk, if I have the right of it.” Robb’s face must have betrayed him, for the woman sized him up with a titter. “Too good at attracting attention, that one. The wrong sort, betimes. Still, if he’ll see you, then that’s up to him. Take a seat in the salon, then, there’ll be someone along to bring you wine and aught else you want while you wait.”  
  
Amongst those he paid to warm his bed (or to let him warm theirs, more accurately) Robb had had certain favourites before, men and women alike – he stubbornly refused to give credence to Theon’s teasing that it was men more often than women – and it was not so uncommon that the whores he preferred were the ones the other patrons did as well. He was used to having to wait, when he wanted a specific sort of company, and so he offered no argument.  
  
A thin, effete young blonde boy in a virtually sheer linen shirt brought him a flagon of Dornish red with a simpering smile and great deference, and though he had recovered from his previous bout of embarrassment, Robb flushed anew when he realized that almost all the courtesans milling about were thus: comely young men with pretty faces more befitting a maid than a man. Those that weren’t were men nonetheless, even if they were built more largely and allowed a dusting of stubble to grow along their jaws. He’d known brothels fit to service any taste, but had never seen one quite so specialized. Nor had he ever seen one quite so finely appointed. The room was luxuriously but tastefully decorated, without tending to the decadent gaudiness or threadbare appearance of the whorehouses he was used to.  
  
Robb drank deeply of the wine while he sat, picking at the twill of his breeches as though he wanted to wear it away with his fingernail. His head was beginning to swim with drink when a familiar voice made him look up.

“Of course, milady, not at all. You’ve someone to see you home, I trust. I should hate to see you come to harm.” Silk spoke the script of many whores before him, a script Robb had heard himself, if altered some for his sex, but he did not sound quite as obsequious as Robb remembered most of his whores sounding. Robb looked up instinctively at the sound, and dropped his eyes back to his lap almost immediately when he found himself looking into the eyes of a young woman he knew. Not well, not to place her name or her house, but well enough to know her face, and well enough to know that the faint widening of her eyes was that of recognition. Easy enough for the King’s Hand’s eldest son to go unnoticed in the commons, perhaps, but not to anyone familiar with the court. Robb clutched his goblet, ears burning, and stared into his lap. As preoccupied as he’d been with the boy – Silk, Robb reminded himself fiercely, he was called Silk, even if it was ridiculous. He’d called whores things more foolish than that, after all, and he was sure he would again. His shame burned hotter than his lust, and he did not move until a hand on his shoulder startled him.  
  
“I’d thought I might see you tonight, but… you look utterly stricken,” Silk said, the concern in on his voice seeming genuine. “Whatever’s the matter? This is not a place meant for such things.”  
  
Robb bit his lip, tried not to have a small voice when he said, “She knew me. And I… I hadn’t quite known this was…”  
  
Silk’s smile at that was sympathetic, and he pressed his fingers gently to Robb’s jaw, easing him up to meet his eyes. “And I expect that meant you knew her,” he pointed out gently. “The expectation that a woman be proper is every bit as powerful as those you face. More so, even. You could see her tomorrow and I rather doubt either of you would say a word.” He paused, ghosting his fingers down Robb’s neck to the flat of his chest. “You’re not here to worry about such things. Would you care to join me in my chambers?” He looked down at the nearly drained flagon and the corners of his mouth quirked. “There’s more wine there, since you seem to have a thirst.”  
  
“Ah… yes, I suppose that might be good,” Robb managed at last, flustered. “I’m not… disturbing your schedule, then?”  
  
Silk snorted. “I make my own schedule. There are appointments I choose to keep, sure enough, but there are no more this evening.” Almost without Robb’s notice, Silk’s fingers insinuated their way between his own. “Come on, then. It is where you want to be, isn’t it?”  
  
Robb didn’t answer, just followed Silk. Robb looked about the room he was led to with some trepidation. The spacious bed he found was no surprise – that was very nearly a necessity, given Silk’s profession – nor was the expected hearth and nightstand and basin of water. The rug was a sumptuous deep scarlet affair, but even if it was uncharacteristic of a whore’s bedchamber, after what he’d seen of the rest of the brothel, he was not particularly surprised to find this room well-appointed as well. What was surprising, though, was the desk littered with loosely stacked bits of parchment and an inkwell. More surprising still was the tall bookshelf beside it, each row filled to bursting.  
  
Silk was looking at him strangely, as if to ask what had taken him so aback, and Robb blurted, “You can read. And you take guests in your own chamber.”   
  
Silk laughed, just a tiny noise in the back of his throat. “Indeed I can. And indeed I do. Whyever not? Most of my patrons prefer somewhere secluded, and I’ve no need to take up more space than this. I know you lordlings are accustomed to more space than this in a privy, but why should I need more space than what I need for my things and to practice my trade?”  
  
Robb flustered. “I only meant—“  
  
Silk stopped him with an arresting smirk, fluttered his eyelashes in a way that might have been artifice or invitation or both. “I know.” He paused. “I thought I might see you sometime soon,” he said lightly, not seeming to care that he’d repeated himself. “Tell me, does your brother know you’ve a taste for—“  
  
“He’s not…” Robb started to interrupt, then thought better of it. Theon was as much his brother as Bran or Rickon, he’d only become so in a different way. It felt different, but that was probably only because Theon was older, because he’d appeared in Robb’s life at ten, full of tales of war and pillage and the sea. Robb saw some of it for the bravado it was, now, even felt a little sorry for him, but when he’d been five Theon had seemed impossibly grown up. “He’s my foster brother,” Robb admitted, and just like that he’d given up another piece of dangerous information. All Silk had was his name and the knowledge that his brother was in fact his foster brother, but that would be more than enough for any man at court to surmise who he was. Whores might not keep to the same standards, but…  
  
“You’re not in the north any more, Lord Stark,” Silk drawled, either uncaring or insensate of Robb’s palpable frisson of alarm. “Whores here learn discretion quickly, especially those with my… particular talents. Fair or not, those that don’t find themselves out on their arse and working taverns in Flea Bottom.”  
  
In spite of himself, Robb’s eyes clenched shut and his teeth sunk into his bottom lip. His hands were fisted and his cheeks were still aflame. He heard Silk make a soft noise of amusement and gathered himself – it would hardly do for him to be left undone and defeated by a boy scarcely his age who’d not even touched him.  
  
“These… talents of yours,” Robb began, hating the slight tremor in his voice. “What might I have to give for you to practice them?”  
  
Those cool eyes trailed up and down Robb’s frame again, too penetrating by half. “Usually? More than most below your station can afford. Ah, but you? You did me a kindness, however unnecessary, and perhaps it’s only fitting I do you one in return.”  
  
“If it’s only because you feel you owe…”  
  
“All whores feel they owe you something,” Silk interrupted in a low, throaty tone. He was advancing on Robb now, close enough that Robb could smell the tang of spice and citrus rising from his skin; it was the only scent of some oil whores wore as a frippery but Robb wanted to bury his face in the crook of Silk’s neck and breath it in, wanted to taste it bitter against his tongue. Silk grinned wolfishly, so very predatory that Robb found himself shrinking back against the wall despite his body’s desire to do anything but. “It’s the very nature of the trade, after all. And you do want me, don’t you?” He pressed his hands flat to Robb’s chest then, his breath puffing out over Robb’s throat. Robb swallowed thickly; he was long past the point of denial, had been since he’d entered the door. “It took a good heart to do what you did last night, but a good heart that’s not tempered with a better sense of self-preservation is a dangerous combination, around here. So I can either conclude that you’re brave and stupid, or that you’re only like any other man and you acted to get something you want. It’s no different to me, but it would be better for you if you were selfish.”  
  
Robb opened his mouth to respond – with what, exactly, he wasn’t really sure – but instead his teeth sunk in to his lip and a rough noise of anticipation gusted out of him as Silk’s hands closed around his hips and he knelt, following them down. Nimble fingers found the laces of his breeches and Robb shivered at the warm surge of blood into his cock. “You—“ he tried to begin, hoarse, and Silk’s eyes flicked up to him, glinting with amusement.  
  
“Shut up,” he reprimanded, punctuating the statement by palming Robb through his breeches, then amended: “Well, perhaps not. Stop thinking.”  
  
Robb knew he shouldn’t take such a slight from a whore, knew he _should_ be cross, knew Theon would have fisted his hands in Silk’s hair and made _him_ shut up – but before the thought had coalesced into action, his breeches were yanked open and wrested down his hips, his cock left exposed to the room’s cool air. Silk sized him up nakedly, and Robb would have blushed again if he had room in his head for anything more than watching him.  
  
“And you’re still a boy?” Silk asked, in the lazy, self-possessed way Robb was beginning to suspect he carried all the time. “My, I don’t know whether to pity your future lady wife or envy her.”  
  
Robb did blush hotly at that; it wasn’t the first time a whore had told him as much, and whether one was like to believe a whore about such things or not, he knew there was an element of truth to it. He’d been with enough other men to know. Then Silk’s tongue, soft and pliant, stroked experimentally over the ridge beneath the head of his cock, and he gasped. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but it hadn’t been such tentative delicacy. Staring up at Robb unblinking, Silk repeated the action, this time a long, wet lick from his balls to his tip, and Robb’s fingers curled uselessly against the wall as Silk lapped at the slit at the head of his cock.  
  
The fitful scrabbling of his hands should have been embarrassing enough, but it was nothing compared to the choked, pathetic sound he made as he watched Silk’s lips close around him. He’d thought of it at least a dozen times the night before, tossing and turning in his bed, but no fantasy could compare to the rush he got watching those pretty pink lips seal around him; the grip of his own fist could never compare to the fire that sparked in his belly when Silk swirled his tongue and sucked, his eyes still trained on Robb’s face.  
  
Robb wanted to watch, it seemed such a waste not to, but he couldn’t keep his eyes from closing when Silk’s hand curled around him, squeezed, and made its way up to meet his mouth. Robb managed to not make a noise that time, twitching as his breath hitched in his throat, but then Silk settled into a slow, steady rhythm, and Robb looked down at him and couldn’t keep his moan from bubbling up. Silk’s eyes were closed, now, lashes fanned out against his cheekbones, but his face was the picture of ardent concentration, and for all that he’d japed of Robb’s size he bobbed his head without difficulty or hesitance. Silk reached up with his other hand to cup Robb’s balls, manipulating them gently in the palm of his hand, and the sharp surge of heat that pulsed through Robb’s entire body threatened to buckle his knees; it felt as if the constraint of his breeches still tight around his thighs was the only thing keeping him upright.  
  
Robb would have been more than happy to simply let things come to an end like that, only wanted for nothing to change, until Silk looked up at him with heated eyes and tugged Robb’s hand down to the back of his head, and, in defiance of what he’d thought, it had gotten even better, made his legs tremble. Robb knotted his fingers through the curls obligingly, tugging but not guiding him down like he could; Gods, he didn’t need to, even with the languorous slide of Silk’s mouth there was no guidance he could give to make it any better. The only thing that did was Silk’s answering muffled moan when Robb pulled at his locks hard enough to hurt, the way his tongue stuttered against Robb’s cock. Silk took to his task with relish, Robb realized faintly, without the skilled but mechanical air of obligation most whores had, and for all that he’d been sick with wanting (it was easier to admit it now, even if he’d deny it later) now he couldn’t imagine it any other way, Silk’s muffled noises at a twitch of Robb’s hips or a rough tug at his hair were almost better than the feel of his mouth around him. Robb had always liked to feel his lovers’ reactions, but frequenting whores had never given him much of a chance. He pulled at Silk’s hair again, Silk trembled and whimpered, not ceasing his pace, and Robb was gone.  
  
He spilled into the welcoming warmth of Silk’s mouth with a loud, animal groan, mind gone blank with white-hot heat sensation, one hand scraping against the wall and the other yanking at those dark curls again, his legs and arse clenching so hard they threatened to cramp, finally receding to an unsteady tremor just as Robb thought he might pass out. He hadn’t quite come down yet, but he could feel the bone deep exhaustion threatening to encroach when he let Silk help him slide down against the wall.  
  
One look at Silk’s face was all it took, though; all Robb had to do was take in those flushed cheeks and swollen spit-damp lips, the way his chest heaved, and then he almost leapt at Silk, colliding their mouths together and biting at his bottom lip, sliding his tongue into Silk’s mouth to taste the bitter remnants of his own release. Silk startled and pulled back with a gasp and a wet pop when Robb began fumbling with the laces of his own breeches, his eyes wide and flashing with conflict. “You don’t—“  
  
“Shut up,” Robb retorted with a grin, mimicking Silk’s earlier rebuke as he worked his hand into Silk’s breeches, closed it around his cock. “I want to, and so you’ll let me. Nature of the trade, right?”  
  
Something like his typical wry amusement flitted across Silk’s face before he groaned, pressing into Robb’s hand. “Right, then,” he panted. “Fair enough.”  
  
Robb stroked him firmly, no finesse or grace to his touches, just determination, but Silk rocked into his hand, his teeth sinking into his lip and a sweat breaking out on his forehead. When his hips began to stutter and his breath began to catch, Robb pressed forward to catch his mouth again, swallowing his moan of release and matching it with a softer one of his own. Robb stroked him through it, his hand growing lazier as their tongues did, until Silk shuddered and caught his wrist, pushing his hand away.  
  
Robb took him in, Silk still breathing heavily and twitching with the last of it, and couldn’t help his breathless murmur of, “Gods.” Silk smiled, weak but still devilish. Robb looked down at the mess Silk had made of his hand, resisted the urge to taste it, then looked down at Silk’s dark blue breeches and gave a breathless laugh. “Those are velvet,” he realized, “and that stain is never coming out. My hand, however, should be easier to clean.”  
  
Silk grinned, a little more himself this time, and took Robb’s wrist between his thumb and forefinger, guiding his hand to the already stained fabric at his hip. Robb wiped his hand, taking the opportunity to touch the muted swell of Silk’s hipbone as he did. Silk seemed to notice, a hint of smugness flitting across his features.  
  
“Well then,” Silk said briskly, and suddenly the world righted itself and became ordinary again, “I told you there was wine. Would you care for a restorative before you’re on your way?”  
  
A hollow feeling set in in the pit of Robb’s gut. It wasn’t that he was expected to leave; he was always expected to leave and never made anything of it. It was the same thing that always happened when he visited the boys, the crushing guilt that it was never as good with the women and there was something _wrong_ with him. Theon only ever laughed at him, told him his tastes were his tastes and it made no matter so long as he could perform in his wife’s bed well enough to whelp pups, but it never stopped Robb from feeling guilty when the headiness of drink and arousal began to fade.  
  
“No,” Robb said in a strained voice, fumbling at the laces of his breeches with shaking hands. “No, I’m sorry, I really must be going. Things to do on the morrow and all that. I… Thank you for your time.”  
  
“Of course,” Silk agreed, perfectly professional, but there was something knowing and sad in his eyes. “Well, you know where I am, if you don’t mean to begin following in the footsteps of Baelor the Blessed.”  
  
Despite his earlier statement, Silk didn’t protest when Robb left what he was used to paying at the finer whorehouses plus some extra, and Robb didn’t want to think about why it relieved him. At least I won’t be so distracted any more, Robb thought as he left, at least things should get better now.


	3. Constancy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things between Robb and Theon have always skirted the line between fraternity and impropriety.

It wasn’t proper, boys their age sharing space like this, Robb encircled In Theon’s arms with his temple pressed to Theon’s collarbone, but it wasn’t really the sort of impropriety one might assume it was. Robb had fallen asleep with Bran or Rickon in his arms or his lap much the same way after one of his brothers had cajoled him into a story before bed – though they fit better, their smaller frames removing any but fraternal intimacy from it. Still, his moments like this with Theon… they were almost brotherly, had begun in a way that should have been brotherly, and yet they weren’t, quite. So went most things with Theon. He was Robb’s closest friend, his brother in all but blood, but something between them had always felt unaccountably different.

Robb tried not to think about why too much. There were really only two viable reasons that he could see, and one made him uncomfortable, and the other made him feel so badly for Theon he could hardly stand it.

But if it was still innocent now, it had been even more so when they’d first begun doing it. Even before the first night that had been cold enough to find them sharing a bed for warmth, when Theon had only been at Winterfell for about a fortnight, Robb had come to Theon’s room. He’d only just been given the freedom to sleep away from his mother or Old Nan or Septa Mordane, and he was unbearably curious about his household’s new addition. Theon hadn’t been thought old enough to have been given the bar for his door – or maybe someone hadn’t trusted him – and so when Robb made his way confidently to Theon’s room, used to having the run of Winterfell, there was nothing to stop him from finding Theon sobbing desolately into his pillow.

Robb had been perplexed. Perhaps he should get Mother? No, he hadn’t thought that would be wise. She wasn’t unkind to Theon, but Robb had had the half-formed sense, guided by juvenile instinct, that she didn’t feel the same for Theon as she did for him and Sansa and Arya. Theon never called her Mother, either; he called Robb’s parents Lord and Lady Stark with a flat tone and a dull look in his eyes. But Father had called Theon his foster brother. Robb had never had a brother, though he’d hoped he might when Mother had been carrying Arya, but he knew that it was supposed to be much the same as having a sister only he was a boy, and didn’t Sansa stop crying when Robb went to her and held her? It wasn’t entirely pleasant, she always dripped tears and snot on his face and his shirt, and Arya had even gotten sick on him once while he held her, but they were his little sisters, after all, and it was his job to take care of them.

He was padding carefully towards the bed when Theon noticed him with a start. The look he gave Robb was one of unadulterated hatred. He stopped crying – of course he did, Theon had always been proud and he hadn’t been raised to believe a man could ever weep – but his eyes were still wet and red, and his voice shook as he said, “Get out.”

Robb was undeterred. “Why are you so sad?”

Theon’s face had been incredulous. “Are you that stupid? Nuncle always said you Starks were a stupid lot, but…”

Robb scowled. “You don’t have to be mean. I want to help you.”

“You? You can’t help me,” Theon snorted. His voice broke on another whimper and a torrent of mucous came from his nose. Robb hopped up on the bed beside him and wrapped his arms around Theon. Theon had been a lanky youth, but Robb’s arms were still barely long enough to do it.

“I can try,” Robb said stubbornly. “Father says you’re my brother now.”

“Your father lied,” Theon said sharply, squirming out of Robb’s arms. “Your father killed my brothers. Tell me, Stark, do you think I chose to come here? Would you choose to leave your mother and sisters? Well, you might, it would at least get you out of this wasteland, but I would never have left home if I’d had a choice.”

Robb frowned. He might not have known the truth of Theon’s situation back then, but he’d not been so thoroughly insulated from talk of the war. He’d gone to his mother crying once after overhearing some fretting scullery maids, asking her if his father would be killed. It was hard to think of Father killing anyone, and maybe Theon was wrong, but he’d seemed so sad since coming to Winterfell that Robb let it go. “I’m sorry,” he said solemnly. “I am. But I didn’t do it, and I… I thought we could be friends.”

“You’re only a child!” 

“So are you,” Robb retorted tartly. Theon actually laughed, and, encouraged, Robb put a hand on his forearm and reminded him again, “And you’re my brother now.”

“It’s not been my experience that brothers are supposed to be friends, Stark,” Theon replied, not sounding particularly sad about the fact.

“Maybe brothers don’t have to be friends, because they’re brothers, and that’s better,” Robb said uncertainly. Theon wrinkled his nose.

“Or maybe they’re only competition,” he said sourly. “Perhaps if your mother’s new babe-in-arms had been a boy, he’d have slain you one day.”

“He would never have,” Robb asserted. “Father says kinslaying is the worst crime a man can commit, and the Starks are no criminals. And if you’re my brother…”

Theon cut him off with a low sound of annoyance. “Are you always this stubborn, Stark?”

Robb pondered and then replied boldly, not managing to sound quite as confident as Theon, “Are you, Greyjoy?”

Theon laughed again, then, and he tolerated it when Robb hugged him again. Ten years later Robb would marvel at the fact that Theon had come around so easily; it wasn’t like him at all, but it was easier for Robb to be surprised than to admit how terribly lonely Theon must have been. They’d spent a long while in conversation, as easy as it could be in the circumstance, Robb talking about snowstorms, the Wall, and the godswood, and asking Theon about the Iron Islands. We do not sow, Theon had said, and Robb had screwed up his face and asked quizzically, “Do you know how silly that sounds?”

“Let me guess,” Theon said laconically, “because winter is coming.”

Robb had giggled at that, but when he collected himself he agreed solemnly, “Yes. That is why.”

Robb had fallen asleep in Theon’s bed that evening, and Theon neither rousted him out with an elbow nor carried him back to his own chamber, though it might have been a feat if he’d tried. Theon might have been twice his age at the time, but Robb had always been thicker set; he’d been almost a foot shorter than Theon at five but nearly as wide in the shoulders. He’d woken up with Theon’s arms around him; they’d gotten entwined at some point in the night, Robb was sure, for Theon to have chosen to sleep that way would have been far too close to vulnerability for his friend’s taste, but after that first time it had simply begun happening. Not always, but often enough. The night after the first time Robb had watched his father kill a man, though it didn’t pass without Theon boasting that he’d seen as much a hundred times by Robb’s age; the first time Theon’s name day passed without word from his father (and all those after); the time they were both flogged for leaving a dead fish in Old Nan’s bed. Theon had been fascinated that fish could live in “this bloody freezing place,” and Robb told him that the maester said their blood froze when it got too cold, and then thawed when it warmed. Theon had wanted to try and eat the fish, and Robb had been horrified – we don’t eat things without fur, he said, we don’t eat things that look like _that._ Using the fish for a joke was the only thing they could manage to agree on. It got Robb out of having to eat the terrifying looking creature and appealed to Theon’s sense of mischief.

Robb had still never eaten fish, not even now that it was often offered at supper. He’d never quite gotten over his visceral reaction to the appearance of the creatures. Theon ate it, but Robb couldn’t help but notice that he attacked the heartier fare he’d grown used to in the north with more vigour.

Theon had been waiting for him in his chambers when he’d returned from the brothel, sprawled lazily across Robb’s bed. He was swilling from a skin of wine and paging through one of the books their new maester had bade them to read. Robb was indifferent to the man, he didn’t much like him and he missed Maester Luwin, but only dimly. Theon hated him, and Robb knew it was because Theon had always gone to Luwin for the sort of advice Robb went to Ned for.

Still, vexed with Theon for disappearing – or maybe just because he’d been right – Robb hadn’t been able to resist teasing, “I don’t think you’re meant to study with a drink in your hand, Greyjoy.”

Theon grunted. “You’re feeling better now, then?”

“Piss off,” Robb said, not willing to admit anything. “Though I expect I’ll feel better after a good night’s rest.”

“I promised Arya I’d take her riding tomorrow. I’m sure she’d like it if you came,” Theon said, reminding him not to expect a lazy morning in bed. “I know we’ll have to take half your father’s bloody guard along with us, but at least she’ll have a chance to get out of this godsforsaken keep.” He paused, frowning. “She hates it here, you know. Almost as much as we do.”

Robb sighed. “At least Sansa’s happy.” 

“I wish she weren’t,” Theon muttered. “That princeling’s a rotten little beast, and your father would put a stop to the wedding if only Sansa would say the word. Though you might find yourself betrothed to the princess. But then your sister’s always had a head full of songs, and naught but life will cure that, I’m afraid.”

It wasn’t that Theon wasn’t right; Robb would happily marry the dauphin’s better tempered younger sister to keep Sansa away from Prince Joffrey. But Robb still frowned; he couldn’t miss it – how familiarly Theon spoke of Arya when Sansa was only “your sister.” 

Still, Sansa had never much taken to Theon, any more than Theon had her, and if Robb couldn’t truly blame a girl of thirteen for her misguided feelings, it had always distressed him how Sansa seemed to look down on Theon. Robb had finally gotten her to stop pointing out that Theon was only a hostage, and Theon had always seemed to let it roll off of his shoulders, but the two of them had never grown close, not like Theon and Arya. Arya had been nearly as fascinated with Theon as Robb had been as a child, and though Theon had made a more valiant effort to keep her at arm’s length than he’d done with Robb, they’d grown fond of one another. Theon had taught Arya to shoot a bow, much to Robb’s entertainment and Bran’s chagrin – she’d taken to it immediately, when Bran hadn’t improved much even under Theon and Ser Rodrik’s tutelage. Robb’s mother fretted and Ned hid his concern and his smiles behind his hand in turn, but neither had told Theon to stop, even if Arya was still forbidden from practicing in the yard under Ser Rodrik’s guidance. Arya had always yelled at Sansa when she tried to slight Theon, even when Theon took her aside and told her that it was all right and she should stop quarrelling with her sister.

Robb loved Arya, and he was as close with her as he’d been raised to believe siblings were meant to be, but Arya was Theon’s just as surely as Sansa was Robb’s. It made sense, really, Arya and Theon were the closest things to outcasts there were at Winterfell, and it made Robb smile to see his normally prickly friend treat his sister so gently, even when he was encouraging her to some show of rebellion that would age her septa six months in an evening. Sansa was proper and dutiful by nature, and even though Robb struggled with it more, he was the same, by necessity. Sansa had learned to talk with Robb hovering over her crib and babbling in his own hardly intelligible voice, had always come to him for any problems she didn’t want to discuss with her septa. He was only two years older but it sometimes seemed that Sansa thought that was a lifetime. He wanted to tell her that he wished she wouldn’t look up to him so, but he had secrets he could never bear to tell his little sister, and he couldn’t tell her why without exposing them. He’d die from the shame, and perhaps that was just why he and Sansa had always gotten along so well.

No, Robb’s secrets were for Theon, who had never truly judged him a moment in his life, not for his captivity nor any of Robb’s own failings, and Robb’s gut gave a sick twist of guilt for being so reticent. “Theon,” he said softly, and Theon actually turned to face Robb at the urgent note in his voice, his expression caught somewhere between his trademark grin and concern. “Yes, I’ll come with you and Arya tomorrow. And you were… You were right. I think. I do feel better, only… only I don’t.”

Theon’s smile faded and he propped himself up on his elbows and set his book aside. “Get over here, Stark. Drown your sorrows or confess them, as you will, but choose one.”

Robb sat down beside him with a sigh, taking a long pull from the wine Theon offered him. “And if I choose both?”

“All the better. For such an obtuse lot, you Starks think entirely too much,” Theon teased, with no real sting. “I swear by the Drowned God, Robb, I can _hear_ you thinking. And I’d bet you my horse I know why.”

Robb smiled wanly. “It’s fine, Theon,” he said softly. “Don’t trouble yourself.”

“It is clearly _not_ fine, Stark.” Theon poked him roughly in the chest. “You’re a piss poor liar. Did the little slut bite it off, or are you brooding again?” Robb didn’t answer, avoiding his eyes, but Theon made an illuminated noise anyway. “Ah, yes, so brooding, then.”

“I’m not brooding,” Robb said sullenly. His shoulders were slumped and he was picking idly at the furs. 

Theon threw his head back and laughed. “Clearly not. Why the guilt, Stark? You’re no Whoresbane Umber.”

“They don’t speak of Hothor Umber, Theon, and it’s not because he killed that man,” Robb said, troubled. “Rich men kill whores more than I care to think about, and Lord Umber was robbed. The reason no one will speak of it is because the whore was a man.”

Theon shrugged. “So people are stupid. That’s hardly new information. Privileged men keep pets of all persuasions, and no one says a word. I’m rather fond of my people’s tradition of doing it in the open, but you greenlanders do it all the same. You’ll have to wed and you’ll have to whelp, and if I know you, you’ll be good to the woman you do it with. But you don’t have to love each other. Most don’t, your parents notwithstanding. Besides, you _do_ like girls. Not so much as boys that look like them, true, but well enough.” Robb was silent, but he took a long, greedy pull at the wine. “Besides, Robb, it’s not all bad. There would be bastard wolf pups from here to Winterfell if not for your proclivities. I’m sure your father would rather you spilled your seed on barren ground if you must needs spill it at all, which like most men, you must.”

“Don’t,” Robb said abruptly. “Don’t mention my father, please. But…” he hesitated, biting his lip.

“Out with it,” Theon said impatiently. “If you didn’t want to say it, you shouldn’t have started.”

“You may be right about… about other’s tastes,” Robb said haltingly. “The place I went tonight…”

“Nary a skirt in sight?” Theon suggested. 

Robb flushed. “Well, there was, but she wasn’t a whore. She was… she was somebody’s daughter. I knew her.”

“And as you know only ladies and whores, you now have a delightful bit of blackmail material. She’s less allowed to lay with men than you are.”

Robb smiled, faintly. “Funny you should say that. It’s just what Silk said.”

Theon tensed. “Fuck,” he said eloquently. “This isn’t over, is it? You weren’t supposed to talk to him, Robb! You were supposed to bugger him silly and be on your way.”

“We didn’t talk,” Robb protested. “We didn’t even…”

“If you didn’t talk, and you didn’t even, then what were you doing there?”

Robb wanted to avert his eyes, but he had never been one to shy away from such topics with Theon, so he said, “Other things. He…”

“Well enough,” Theon interrupted. “And I’m sure you’ll be off to see him again soon. I know you. Just remember that whores are whores; you can sequester them all you wish but you’ll never make a lady of one. Least of all that one, I think.”

Robb sighed. “I’m well aware. I’m not an idiot, Theon; I don’t mean to get friendly. I just wish… it doesn’t matter.”

Theon looked at him curiously, then seemed to decide to let it go. He cuffed Robb in the shoulder and then laid back. “Get over here, Stark, it’s cold. Bloody southroners don’t seem to know what a fire is for.”

Southroners, Robb thought, and he hid a smile behind his hand. Is that so, Greyjoy? But Theon hadn’t questioned his own slip of the tongue, and so Robb granted him the same courtesy. He didn’t think about the fact that it wasn’t cold; no one who had ever lived in the north for any time to speak of could possibly have thought so. He just nestled himself in Theon’s arms, so familiar it didn’t even feel strange, and wound up falling asleep there.


	4. Permanence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everyone wears masks, some just do it better than others.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I screwed up my own timeline pretty badly, despite the fact that I have this story pretty well mapped out. A friend will be beta-ing from here on out, and thank you to bearundersiege for pointing it out without telling me I suck. I reread Kushiel's Dart recently and I realized that from a medieval perspective, it's probably about right that one would "enter service" at around 13. So I meant to mostly go with that, though not quite, and my subconscious disliked the idea and rebelled. I think that's what happened; although clearly I should have done a better job of checking for consistency. Mea culpa.

All of Jon’s earliest memories were to do with Satin or Ellyn. Ellyn wasn’t his mother – even if she hadn’t been honest with him, Jon would have figured as much, eventually. His eyes held none of the darkness hers did, his hair grew in wild black curls while hers grew in soft blonde strands about her face, and his skin had none of her olive cast. He only barely remembered the part of his life he’d spent in Dorne, before they’d found Satin, but what he did remember was how his skin had blistered from the sun, the way it had come away with a dusting of freckles after it had healed. Ellyn had had no such problems, even though she’d gone about in short filmy gowns that marked her for exactly what she was. Jon was always a little incredulous, when he thought back on it. A whore and what would have looked to be her son, no more than five, and yet somehow neither of them had ever come to harm. He was sure she’d have had the coin to hire sellswords – it seemed she’d been a success in Dorne, as they’d come to the brothel Ellyn managed now at the request of an old friend. Jon didn’t remember much about him, only that he’d been frail and sick and hadn’t lived long. He thought there was probably much of it Ellyn had spared him intentionally, and he’d asked her of it, but she’d always deflect him with a kiss to his cheek or a sharp tongued joke. Jon had always known better than to push the matter after that. 

He was incredulous, yes, but beneath that Jon admired her deeply. She’d been a lone woman with nothing to her name (or at least nothing on her person) but a knife and a boy child not even her own, and somehow she’d kept them safe and made something of a life for them. A lesser woman would have sold him, or beaten him, or begun prostituting him against his will when he was too young to object. The only time she had ever truly tried to deny him anything had been when Jon, who had never known much else, had asked when he was to begin working. Ellyn never wanted much credit – his father, whoever he was, had done his mother, whoever she was, the courtesy of seeing that Jon would have an education and that they’d never want for anything a well off commoner might have. He supposed Ellyn must have been his mother’s friend – he supposed his mother must have been dead, and that she must have been a whore – for his mother to entrust Jon to her. Jon never really knew where the money came from, whether his father had been fool enough to entrust a whore with a sum of money that large and had only been lucky it ended up with Ellyn, whether he still sent it, or if there was simply some sort of arrangement with one of the banks. Nor did he much care. Ellyn had never abused it that he could see; she wouldn’t even have had to tell him. He’d never wanted for nourishment, clothing, or shelter; he still visited a maester twice a week and came away with books he was expected to read and sheets of sums he was meant to complete – and Jon had little enough interest in his father.

He’d used to want to know, when he was small. He’d asked Ellyn if she was his mother for the first time when he was six, just before they left Dorne, and she had told him, “No, little one, but your mother loved you very much and so do I.”

Jon remembered frowning; he remembered his voice quavering when he said, “Oh. I wish you _were_ my mother.”

“And I should be very pleased to have such a fine young man for a son, pet,” Ellyn had said gently, ruffling his hair like he still sometimes let her do when there was no one else around. “You are mine and I shall see you never come to harm, but I won’t lie to you. I couldn’t do that to your mother.”

He was a little older when he first asked about his father, since Ellyn never spoke of him. He was a little older before he even figured out that everyone had a father; he’d not spent much time with men of any sort before they’d settled in King’s Landing. Ellyn had smiled sadly. “Your father cared for you too, Jon, but… You know something of the world, now. He couldn’t have claimed you for his own, and you might just be better off for it. There are many who would be unkind to a child because he was gotten out of wedlock, and more still, the closer one gets to noblemen. He bade me to care for you and saw that I had the resources to do it. He named you, I think, for someone he loved very much.”

“And what of it? He gave me a name and then left me,” Jon insisted petulantly, pouting. 

“There are men who would have done much less than that.”

“But who was he?” Jon pressed.

“It’s not important,” Ellyn said dismissively. “You have me, and you have Satin. It will do you no good to think of a man you’ll never see.”

For a long time, Jon hadn’t agreed. He had a father, somewhere, and he’d wanted desperately only to know who he was. He was Jon Sand just as Ellyn was Ellyn Sand, but he knew by now that that didn’t mean they shared blood, only that they shared the dubious honour of having a highborn parent. He didn’t dream of his father taking him away to some castle. Not since he’d been a child prone to such flights of fancy, anyway; he loved Ellyn and Satin, the others had all doted on him when he was small, and he’d entertained no shortage of deeply unhappy lords – he only wanted a better sense of who he was. If Ellyn wasn’t his mother, and she wouldn’t tell him who his father was, then who was he, really?

But he’d grown and he’d put aside such callow notions, and he’d taken on the mantle of “Silk” with some amusement. Satin had grumbled, but Jon had assured him that it wasn’t meant to be cruel. They had always been two sides of the same coin, ever since Jon had found Satin alone on the Kingsroad with an empty belly and dirty cheeks and invited him to share his bread and cheese, so why not in this? 

“Because you don’t have to do this,” Satin had said softly. Jon had laughed him off. Satin had to know there was no shame in what they did; he’d grown up just as Jon had. It was mostly pleasant enough work; outside of certain agreed upon conditions, Ellyn wouldn’t abide her patrons hurting her workers. He’d sometimes come away with a tired jaw or an aching arse, but it was surely a more interesting profession than bookkeeping. He might have made a knight, if he’d been trained – he did sometimes wish for that, if he was honest, but he knew better than to be unhappy with what he had. The way they’d found Satin and the vague stories Ellyn had told him were enough to enforce that.

So Jon was some rich man’s by-blow who’d been raised by a whore, and maybe that was sad, in its way, but why should he let it keep him from living a life of his own? He’d never once in his life been unloved or unwanted, not like Satin and some of the other boys had been, and the whores he’d been raised amongst never wanted for much; he had no notion of the more meager lives some whores lived, not in any more than stories some of the other men had told in passing when they thought he was out of earshot. There was a sort of fraternity amongst them even when quarrels arose. Jon had never known a proper family; he had only known the brothel, and it had made him happy enough. Why shouldn’t he do the same? Ellyn had meant for him to find work as a scribe or a factor, but the older he got the less the notion appealed to him. He couldn’t imagine being so very apart from Ellyn or Satin. Between the two of them, Jon and Ellyn had taught Satin to read and to count, but he’d never make a profession of it, not like Jon could with the lessons he’d been taking practically since he took his first toddling steps, with the maester who’d taught him to attest to his skill.

A woman had asked him once why a brothel that only offered male company was run by a woman. Jon had laughed – not unkindly, she was too sheltered to know she’d asked a silly question – and told her that a high-class brothel needed a woman’s touch. It might be that what he’d said wasn’t strictly true, but this _particular_ brothel wouldn’t run properly without Ellyn. Nor, Jon thought, would he be able to. Life without Ellyn was inconceivable to him. He might have a head for management; he supposed he could do it, but he wouldn’t want to. He was a creature of relatively simple pleasures – he took regular exercise and mostly enjoyed his lessons, but he wasn’t particularly ambitious. Unless he wanted to take over the brothel, he was at what was like to be the pinnacle of his career. Some nobles liked to have educated company, and amongst whores, it was hard to come by. Jon supposed that most educated whores were like him, that they were some lord’s bastard. As though an education could drastically alter the fact that one had been raised in a brothel. He wondered what his father would have thought of that, that the bastard he’d got in Dorne had lowered his bloodline so. In his worse moods, he relished the thought.

Jon had retired for the evening after seeing the Stark boy. He’d changed into looser fitting, more comfortable clothing and built up his fire for the night. He remembered little enough about Dorne but it sometimes seemed the heat had gotten into his blood, and it was always too cold at night, much as the food always seemed too bland. Ellyn felt the same and they always had spicy peppers and olives to hand, despite the expense. Satin had only ever tried the peppers once, and he’d choked and spluttered and declared them both mad once he could speak again, after Jon had hurried to find him a sliver of cheese to ease the sting. The memory made him smile to himself and consider sneaking to the kitchens to find the jar of pickled peppers he knew was there. Ellyn would have his hide, though, and there were probably still patrons about, so Jon contented himself with a cup of wine. It wasn’t the truly expensive stuff they kept on hand for their customers, but it was a good enough vintage all the same, at least to Jon’s tongue. Jon might have had the Dornish taste for warmth in his bones and spice in his food, but Ellyn and Satin both despaired of his ever having any taste in wine.

Satin sought him out sometime later, just after Jon had drained his first cup and poured a second. Satin walked in and poured himself a glass without a word, then sat down on the bed beside Jon. Satin too had changed into something simpler, just a loose white shirt and soft brown breeches. It was all for the better because the first drink he tried to take dribbled down his chin and soaked into the neckline, gracing it with a deep purple stain that wouldn’t likely come out. Satin swore, and Jon laughed, leaning in to lick the wine from his skin.

“You are a clumsy oaf, you know that?” Jon teased, taking the bite out of the question by dropping a peck to the corner of Satin’s mouth. Satin only grunted, but the corners of his eyes were wrinkled by his attempt to keep his smile at bay. “Was your evening all right, then?”

Satin shrugged. “No better and no worse. One of them brought me a gift and then wanted me to wear it. A gold necklace, if you can imagine. It didn’t bother me to wear the stupid thing, I suppose, but I’ll never wear it again and that sort of coin could feed a family for a month at least.”

“Some men wear necklaces, and besides,” Jon breathed, catching Satin’s chin in his hand and tilting it upwards, “you do have a lovely neck. I can hardly blame him for wanting to call attention to is.” He punctuated his statement by sinking his teeth into the pale flesh there, tasting the salt of his sweat, and Satin shivered. 

“You’re awfully clingy tonight, Jon,” he murmured. “Not that I’m complaining, but… You were rather out of sorts last night, as well. Is there something the matter?”

Jon resolutely did _not_ think about the fact he’d barely gotten away from Robb Stark the previous evening before his stomach had lurched as though he might be ill and the trembling he hadn’t been able to keep from his hands began wracking his whole frame. He did not think about the nightmare that had jerked him awake with a shock of vertigo. He didn’t think about other, better things, either, about wide blue eyes and a reserved shy smile.

He mustn’t have managed to keep his turmoil from his face, though, because Satin had taken his hand and said softly, “Well, I know you, and I know you won’t talk to me about it until you’ve decided it’s time. Just know that if you’re not happy, you don’t have to keep…”

“Yes, I’m quite aware,” Jon said with a weary sigh. He rolled onto his side and pressed his cheek to Satin’s chest. “And if I should ever change my mind, I’ll be just as able to read and write as I ever was. Fucking doesn’t make a man lose his wits.” He realized what he’d said and laughed, belatedly. “Well, I suppose it can if you’ve done it right, but not for good.”

“Jon, really,” Satin protested, but he let Jon nuzzle against him and wrapped him in his arms. 

It wasn’t common, at least in Jon’s limited experience, for whores to seek one another out as he and Satin did, to want more contact in a life that entailed little else, but it wasn’t really the contact he wanted, it was the intimacy. He didn’t let his clients get close. He liked the girl he’d seen earlier that night. He liked her bright green eyes, the swell of her hips, and her gentle manner; he liked the way her cunt tasted and how she mewled and clutched at him when he pressed his face to it. Would that all his assignations were such a joy, though even those that weren’t weren’t usually a terrible chore. So too had he liked the young man he’d seen earlier, his scrupulously polite and flustered manner. Robb Stark had been ashamed of himself, Jon could read it on his face as clear as day, and he was foolhardy and idealistic – his friend hadn’t been wrong, in Jon’s opinion, in wanting to leave him to deal with his attackers as he would – but for all that he seemed to have a sweet but painfully naïve nature. He’d realized who Robb Stark was before he’d even spoken of his foster brother; some of his clients liked to talk, and the Hand’s firstborn son was not the sort of person who could escape notice. Nor was the Greyjoy boy, though what they said of him was less complimentary and less specific; they knew nothing of him but spoke of his family as a universally untrustworthy lot. Jon hadn’t liked the little he’d seen of him, true, but somehow it didn’t seem quite fair. 

So perhaps there were other things he might have wanted in another life, but even if he’d been willing to abandon his life in the city, they’d take his hands or his head if he so much as thought of telling the girl to come away with him. And becoming some lord’s personal plaything, no matter how well he liked the man or how well he was kept, was simply not an option. He would not put himself in a position where he could be cast off or one where he would be sequestered. He could bear the thought of being many people’s secret – that left him a good measure of freedom - but not the thought of being only one man’s. He was loyal to Ellyn because she’d raised him and Satin because he loved him, but he would be beholden to no one.

“So this new visitor of yours,” Satin began conversationally, “Were you recommended, or…”

“I invited him,” Jon admitted, not mincing words. “I was… out, last night.” He hesitated, waiting for Satin’s inevitable moue of disapproval. Neither Satin nor Ellyn liked when he would meander about at night, especially since he rarely had any reason to beyond wanderlust. Jon had never listened to them. He’d had a few incidents where he became aware that someone was following him and eluded them before they could get nearer and one brawl that had resulted in a black eye and split lip that had very nearly made Ellyn weep and Satin strike him again. He’d never been attacked like he’d been last night, though, and he was privately willing to admit that it had rattled him. “A pair of men tried to mug me,” he lied, not wanting Satin to know the truth of it, “I got in enough blows of my own but it probably would have gone rather more poorly if the man I saw tonight and a friend of his hadn’t intervened. He could afford it, if that’s what you’re wondering, I’ve not gone sentimental.”

Satin frowned. “You’re free to entertain who you will for whatever reason, you know that. In fact you sound a touch defensive.”

“I’m not,” Jon replied immediately. “Although it seems my new friend might be a problem. I think he thinks he’s… special.”

“And is he?”

“Of course not. If it were anyone it would be the girl I saw tonight, and you know as well as I that that will never happen. He was kind, and he was nice enough looking and he seemed to have a sweet temper in a way the men often don’t, but I’ve met his like before and I will again. Those sorts are more fun to entertain, true enough, but at the end of the day it’s all work, isn’t it?”

“It doesn’t have to be,” Satin protested. “I know it’s not likely to happen, but if you really wanted some girl to run off with you and she liked you enough to do it, you’d have the skills to make a life.”

“And I could never show my face here again,” Jon retorted. He rolled away from Satin and took a drink of his wine before pulling his knees to his chest. “You mustn’t know me so well as I thought, if you think I could do such a thing.”

“Perhaps a man, then,” Satin argued stubbornly, crossing his arms; he was retreating from Jon as Jon had him, and it was childish, but it had the desired effect of making Jon feel shamed. “You’ve always seemed to like them just as well as the girls, and you might be kept hidden but it seems to me you’d like that, and—“

“A man could cast me aside at whim,” Jon interrupted glaring at Satin with his chin planted on his knee. “And besides, who’s said I wish for anything to change?”

“Ellyn would like to see it,” Satin said softly. “And so would I. It’s not the job I’m worried about, Jon. You just… I know you won’t believe it, and I’m likely only going to make you angrier with me, but… You get attached to people. You always seem to get over it well enough, but I can tell. You’re going to get tired of it, someday. Ellyn would never put you out, you know, even if you found other work. Even if you didn’t.”

“It wouldn’t be right to stay,” Jon said stubbornly. His temper had flared at Satin’s words, but he was unused to physical rejection from the boy who he’d first kissed at eleven. Satin had been thirteen and put up something of a protest, but Jon had finally managed to stumble upon something Ellyn had wished he’d not have, and he wouldn’t be dissuaded. Satin had understood a little better than Jon by then, and he’d kept those sorts of things at arm’s length as best he could, but it had still been him Jon had come to towards the middle of his thirteenth year, begging him to help him understand. Satin had begun working not long before, having asked Ellyn the same question Jon would soon and having gotten the same answer: he didn’t have to, but Satin felt that he did, and so his career had begun. Men had been asking after Satin and Jon since they were scandalously young – Ellyn had once ordered a man out, when she found him with Satin dandled across his knee - and no small amount of coin changing hands had greeted both their debuts. But before that, when Jon had come to him pleading, Satin had asked if he was as determined as all that and Jon had agreed with a stubborn jut to his jaw that Satin had been teasing him about since they were boys. Satin had determined, aloud and with no small measure of disapproval, that Jon would only do something foolish if Satin didn’t oblige him, and so he’d kissed him properly this time and worked a hand down his breeches. Before he’d first begun working, Jon had learned everything from Satin.

But all their shared history wasn’t enough to keep Jon from being cross with Satin now. He hated to be treated differently from the others, especially Satin himself. “And besides, why just me? I’m no better than either of you.”

“You have options that we don’t. We’d neither of us begrudge you for taking them.”

“She’s the only mother I’ve ever had, Satin, I won’t leave her,” Jon argued fiercely. Realizing his slight, he disentangled himself from his own limbs, leaned over Satin, and dipped his head to claim Satin’s mouth in a brief, soft kiss. “Or you. Gods, how could you not know that? And I won’t stay here without contributing,” Jon asserted. “Besides,” he said, more easily, “it’s truly not that bad. I’m good at it and I like it, mostly.”

“She hates to see you doing this, Jon. And she’s not entirely wrong. You have options, you know. You’ve had a proper education. You could… even if you wanted to stop and teach children to read for whatever you could get in trade. You won’t be six-and-ten forever.”

Jon laughed unreservedly. “A whore teaching destitute children to read? Is this the beginning of some tawdry ballad? Am I to sell them to Lyseni slavers in the end? Gods know that’s what their parents would think, at least those that have them. Besides, it’s as good a job as any other, and better paying and more enjoyable besides. It’s no less honourable than any other common trade and no less necessary. What is it, have you gotten jealous?”

Satin shook his head, not so much in denial as weariness. “Hardly. You’ve never been just mine, Jon, and you never will be, any more than I’ll be only yours. I just… I worry for you. I don’t mean to say you should be ashamed of what you… of what we do. But it’s not as though there’s much future in it.”

Jon climbed atop Satin, his knees on either side of the other boy’s torso, and pressed their faces together. “We’ll manage the brothel together. We’ll do whatever we must. I don’t want anything to be different. It’s never been different and there’s never been any reason for it to be, and I don’t mean to start now.”

Satin obliged him and kissed him, but his brow knit in displeasure all the same. “What if you’re wrong?” he demanded.

“I’m not,” Jon responded immediately. He suppressed his thoughts of the pretty young girl and of the stupid well-meaning boy who had intervened to save a stranger, and with Satin warm beneath him, it was almost easy to do.


	5. Tranquility

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robb finds that his peace in the city will never be lasting.

As Theon had predicted, the next morning found them with Robb’s father’s guard in the Kingswood. Not so many of them as he’d feared, only two, and they kept a respectful difference and seemed happy enough to leave them be. It was almost like when they’d used to go riding at home, except Robb would never have found himself alone, in the Wolfswood – Mother had only ever let Rickon come along when he shared Robb’s horse, and Bran and Sansa would have come along, as well.

Arya had taken off laughing with Theon in hot pursuit and Robb was following them at a more leisurely pace. Theon would have said he was brooding again, if he had been paying Robb any attention. Robb had asked Sansa along that morning; he’d practically begged her to come, but she’d waved him away with a dismissive tone, a quiver in her lip, and a longing look in her eye. Joffrey was a mean little prick, and no mistake. Robb would have liked nothing more than to knock him on his arse, or worse, but his father had quietly forbidden him to spar with the prince after Robb had managed to make him bleed with a practice sword and knock the wind out of him. Joffrey had nearly cried, which only made it all the more irksome when the prince would call him a craven when Robb would politely refuse to spar with him. 

Yes, Joffrey was bad enough, but being dismissed so by his dearest sister actually _hurt._ Sansa hadn’t meant to wound him; it had been writ on her face plain as day that she truly wanted nothing more than to spend the day with them. Her insistence on propriety had been almost endearing when she was younger and would come to Robb sobbing because Arya had soiled the hem of her dress, but Robb did not like her new more stringent nature at all. She would be a queen – she would be _his_ queen, someday, but for now she still looked too much like the little girl he’d grown up with for Robb to credit it. He heard men whisper of her beauty and it was all he could do to excuse himself without hitting them. Sometimes he didn’t think he’d ever be able to look at her without seeing a little girl with chubby cheeks, begging to be picked up.

Between Sansa’s rejection and the sticky breeches he’d woken up with that morning, Robb should have been in an utterly foul mood, though at least he’d managed to conceal the wet patch from Theon. The only reason he wasn’t was that riding in the Kingswood meant he got to have Grey Wind and Blizzard at his side. Nymeria had run ahead with Arya, unsurprisingly, and Lady was lingering with Robb and the other two, occasionally whining and looking at Robb reproachfully, as if he was the reason for Sansa’s absence. Their direwolves were not explicitly unwelcome in the city or the Red Keep, but it had soon become evident that the animals were miserable there and that they made people desperately uncomfortable. So Lady, Nymeria, Blizzard, and Grey Wind more often ranged about the Kingswood than stayed by their masters’ sides.

They’d found the pups a few months before the king had come to Winterfell. Only the five, at first, and Robb had been relieved, because it had allowed him to suggest that perhaps it was an omen; perhaps they were meant to find the cubs as they did. But then Robb had heard a rustling from afar, and they’d found a sixth pup a little apart from Grey Wind and the others, an albino. He was the runt of the litter and his prognosis had seemed even direr than his siblings’. Robb had meant to interrupt, but when Theon had raised his dagger to kill it, Ned had disallowed it in an icy voice. “You will not harm that cub. If we must keep them, we’ll keep them all.” Robb had been startled; his father had had a thunderous expression on his face, and Theon sheathed his knife gape-mouthed. Ned could be stern, mostly when they deserved it, but he hardly ever seemed truly angry. 

Perhaps because he was the oldest or perhaps because he was best at what caring for the pups entailed, Robb wound up claiming both as his own. He’d offered the white one to Theon, who had predictably shrugged him off, stating that he was a kraken, not a wolf. Robb wished Theon would have agreed. He’d seemed out of sorts when he refused but he’d left no room for argument and so the white pup was shared among them, nominally, but Blizzard had always been Robb’s. Father seemed to dote on the unclaimed pup more than the others, though he dismissed the notion of taking him for his own. It had become apparent almost immediately that Blizzard was different from his littermates – he’d been able to see since they found him, and while the others had all been whimpering and growling in tiny little voices since they’d been found, Blizzard had yet to utter a single noise.

Theon had disparaged Robb’s names for the animals. “Blizzard and bloody Grey Wind. How very creative of you.”

Grey Wind had taken to Robb a little more immediately, and even still Blizzard wasn’t as quick to respond to Robb’s command. But then Blizzard had always been more feral than the others, prone to disappearing for days at a time, the quickest to join Shaggydog in his roughhousing. Robb didn’t quite feel he understood Blizzard quite so well as Grey Wind, but the white pup had still always favoured Robb most of all. It was probably because he’d done the lion’s share of his care when he’d been young and helpless. When they’d come south Robb hadn’t been certain that Blizzard would come along, but he had seemed most eager of all on the road south and Robb had found that he was relieved that he’d come along. He was more at ease with both wolves at his side; he felt like he was missing a part of himself when they weren’t around. He had been relieved to discover that both animals flocked to his side almost immediately each time he visited the Kingswood; to have lost them entirely would have set him adrift.

So he had that comfort, at least, even though he missed Sansa and felt almost as restless as he was becoming accustomed to feeling most all the time. Even still, the woods themselves were soothing. The crisp, clean smell of pine was a welcome change from the stench of the city, by turns fetid or cloying; the most familiar smell Robb had ever found in the city was that of a lit hearth, and that he could hardly bear for the heat it produced. The only noise to undercut the quiet of the forest was the burbling of a brook, so soft it was nearly imperceptible to Robb after the weeks of pealing bells, the ring of metal, and shouting merchants. There were all manner of excitements to be found in the city but the truth was that it wasn’t enough to stop Robb from missing Winterfell. He was glad to have his father, Theon, Sansa, and Arya – but it didn’t keep him from missing Bran or Rickon, or, perhaps more shamefully for a boy his age, his mother. Even at home, there was always some degree of undeserved deference to endure, but the truth was that while his father’s bannermen had always treated him with some level of respect, most of them would clap him heartily on the back, call him “boy,” and return to whatever business they had with his father. He was not sure he had ever heard anyone but the smallfolk call him “Lord Stark” before he came south.

But if he was treated less deferentially in the north, it was worth it. He had to guard every word that came out of his mouth and every gesture he made. The Lannisters were a hateful lot, by and large, with the possible exception of The Imp, who was jovial but appeared utterly ineffectual. The Kingslayer was an ass and the queen was a viper. The crown prince was a spoilt little monster. Princess Myrcella wasn’t so bad; she was a soft-spoken little thing with a pretty face who wouldn’t look him in the eye. Robb thought that perhaps things were only awkward between them because of the whispers of their betrothal. 

Prince Tommen, at least, was a sweet little lad that seemed to worship Robb – he had ever since Robb’s ill-fated match with Joffrey. He was made of softer stuff than Bran or Rickon, but Robb could never help but soften a bit when the chubby-cheeked little boy would beg to sit at his side or watch him spar with Theon. If Joffrey was domineering with Sansa, he was outright cruel to his younger brother, and Robb had nearly come to blows with him over it before. It was utterly beyond him how one could treat their own blood the way Joffrey did Tommen, but his father had made it clear he was never to intercede, be it for Sansa or Tommen. There was nothing either of them could do for Tommen, and Father could only help Sansa if she seemed to want to be helped. Robb was wise enough to keep to himself, but he did not think he would be able to keep himself in check if the prince ever harmed his sister.

He realized he’d been riding in a daze when Arya called, “Robb! Come see!”

He picked up his pace and set off in the direction of her voice, and he laughed at the sight that greeted him. Arya was kneeling on the ground next to a rabbit’s carcass, the small longbow she’d brought with her from Winterfell across her back. He hadn’t even known she had it. Her septa would not have let her leave with it, if she’d known. He looked to Theon, who grinned in a way that made his complicity clear. Robb shook his head even as he chuckled. “Really now? And which of you is going to skin and eat that?”

Arya didn’t skip a beat. “Nymeria,” she declared proudly. “Theon said even you can’t shoot rabbits. He said even he couldn’t, at my age.”

Robb cast a look at Theon that he hoped was reproving, though he suspected he was smiling too much for it to have any weight. “Oh? And did he tell you I don’t make a habit of shooting things if we haven’t a use for them?”

“I didn’t,” Theon volunteered, “though I may have mentioned something of her brother’s remarkable capacity to make excuses.”

“It’s _hard_ to shoot rabbits,” Arya insisted petulantly. She yanked the arrow from the rabbit’s chest without recoiling in the least and picked it up by the ears. “Even father says so. And I hit in in the right spot.”

She was fishing for his approval, Robb knew, and she looked so very hopeful that Robb couldn’t deny her it out of a petty, prideful squabble with Theon. “You did well, Arya,” he said at last. He would have leaned down to ruffle her hair if he could have reached without unsaddling himself, but he knew it probably wouldn’t end well. “Shall we, ah, break for lunch?” he asked, eying the rabbit carcass with a little distaste. “Grey Wind and the others might have eaten before we came out today, but I didn’t, and I think I may waste away if I don’t eat soon.”

“You’re always hungry,” Arya said reproachfully.

“Because he’s always bloody growing,” Theon put in. “More out than up, generally. I wasn’t aware the Starks shared blood with the Umbers, but your brother certainly seems to. Or perhaps it’s the Tullys. Sansa does tower over that little prince of hers.”

“The better to spit on his head, if you ask me,” Arya grumbled.

“Arya,” Robb chided, though he couldn’t muster the breathless horror he was sure Sansa would have evinced. “You mustn’t speak that way of the prince.”

Arya glowered. “That doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve it.”

Robb didn’t answer, just climbed off his saddle and tied first his horse and then Arya’s. They weren’t like to go far, anyway, they’d each of them raised their horses since they were foals – which was not so long ago, for Arya’s mare – and though they weren’t bonded the way Robb felt he and his blood siblings were to their direwolves, the horses were very partial to their owners, and often irascible and difficult to control for others. He left them enough rope to wander to the stream, and to graze on such grasses as they could find. Northern horses were a squat, hardy breed that could glean nutrition from nearly anything green, and seemed to eat it all with equal enjoyment. 

Robb pulled a satchel from his saddlebag and set it on the ground, then turned his attention to the rabbit. He told Arya he meant to throw it as far as he could so as to spare them the sight of watching it be ripped into. He wasn’t a squeamish sort; he’d skinned rabbits and deer and everything in between, but it wasn’t as though they _needed_ to watch the wolves bicker over the rabbit and likely tear it to shreds in the process, and when they were dining on neater fare, bread and hard cheese and fruit, it might have been somewhat off-putting to view an animal’s freshly exposed entrails. 

There was wine for Robb and Theon and sweet, cloudy cider for Arya, and if it was a simple meal, there was pleasure enough in it. There were peaches from Highgarden, plump and juicy in a way the ones they managed to get to Winterfell never were. Robb had never much thought he liked fruit, but now that he’d had the opportunity to try fresher fare, and even to eat sorts that wouldn’t keep on the long road to Winterfell, he’d changed his mind. He’d only ever had cherries dried before, but the first time he’d had them fresh he’d gorged himself on their sweet, tart flesh until his father had laughingly warned him off. He found out why soon enough; he’d spent half the night up in the privy, and had since resolved to exercise greater restraint in the consumption of plant matter. The cheese was simply cheese, nothing special, but it was crumbly and sharp and good enough, though Arya preferred the less portable, softer stuff, and the bread was only bread, brown and crusty and soft, since Robb had taken it from the kitchens just that morning. 

One would be hard pressed to deplete the larders of the Red Keep; the prepared food they threw out in a day could have fed a goodly portion of Flea Bottom. Ned would never have stood for it, at Winterfell; he’d have found a way to see that it got to someone who needed it more than the dogs or the swine, but it would be a greater effort to co-ordinate such a thing in the city, and Ned would not have had time for it. Robb wondered at seeing to it himself, his father would have been proud, but he supposed the queen or the prince would have put a stop to it. The king might have allowed it regardless – the king seemed to quite like Robb, though he’d no idea why beyond that he was his father’s son – but Robb did everything he could to avoid the queen and her eldest son. 

Their meal passed mostly in companionable silence. When it was broken, it was mostly because Arya had begun to decry the injustice of one of her arranged activities: sewing or harp practice or dancing, mostly. Theon told her it was a pity such a clever girl was to be wasted on such foolish things. Robb made a note to speak with him. Whether it was true or not, and even though he was glad his friend and his sister had gotten close, there came a time when encouraging Arya was only harming her. It was not as if the Ironborn were known for giving their women any more liberty than anyone else. Arya might have had greater freedom in Dorne or on Bear Island, but his sister was still a little girl at heart; no matter how fiercely she denied it, she was already homesick for their mother and younger brothers. She’d have been miserable if she was sent away from all of them, and anyway, Father would never have allowed it.

The wolves frolicked about, having made understandably quick work of the rabbit, pouncing and snapping at one another in jest and letting out the odd sharp whimper when one of their siblings’ teeth cut deeper than they’d meant them to. The three of them were happy enough watching the wolves. Arya and Theon were as much accustomed to the quieter lives they’d lived in the north as Robb, and even the Iron Islands sounded as though they were a world away from the teeming mass of humanity that was King’s Landing. 

It was time to go back soon enough – his father’s guard had been subtle and discreet in allowing them to do as they pleased, but Robb knew the man’s softly spoken suggestion was more an order than anything else. Arya whined as Robb wished he was still young enough to do, but they packed up their things and left obligingly. Arya’s Septa was waiting for her fretfully upon their return and Theon swept her up in a hug that let Robb press his lips to her cheek without bending to reach her. Robb and Theon had begun to cross the yard to the wing that held their rooms when Robb hesitated.

“Do you hear that?” he asked Theon warily.

“Hear wha…” Theon stopped, tensing up like a hound who’d smelled a fox slipping through the brush. Robb led the way towards the noise they’d heard, a sick feeling already settling in his gut.

When they found little Prince Tommen curled into a sobbing ball in a slight nook in the stone wall, his nose dripping with blood and snot, the sick feeling curled up into a hard cold ball. The boy looked up at them, sniffling, and before Robb could manage a proper greeting in a neutral tone, Tommen launched at him. “R-R-Robb!” he nearly wailed, clinging about his waist. “It hurts!”

Robb slid a hand into the prince’s flaxen curls, calming himself with a slow breath. As it happened, he couldn’t quite manage the prince’s proper title, not when he so clearly wanted comfort. “What’s happened to you, little highness?”

“I, I, I…” Tommen snivelled, but he wouldn’t answer. It was all Robb needed to hear before the rage he’d been keeping carefully controlled surged within him, but then Tommen blurted, “I fell.”

Robb knew he was lying, but it would do no good to argue with the child. He knelt before Tommen, so they were eye to eye. “You fell, did you? Where from?”

“Doesn’t matter,” the boy said stubbornly, a glob of mucous dripping from his nose onto the knee of Robb’s breeches.

Robb ground his teeth. He might well get away with telling the prince he knew he was lying, but what was he to do with that information? Go to the king? Robert might reward his eldest son with a swift backhand but it would change not a thing. The queen would not believe him; she would disregard him at best and accuse him of lying at worst. Father couldn’t do a thing. Instead, suppressing his anger for Tommen’s sake, he picked the boy up and said with a lightness he could not feel, “Shall we get you cleaned up then, little one?”

“Please,” Tommen mewled. Theon looked at the pair of them with an expression that was equal parts pity and dismay. The abuse the prince suffered at his elder brother’s hands was but one more thing that Theon felt Robb should involve himself with as little as possible. 

Robb could see the wisdom in it, but his fury at the injustice of it all had neatly dissipated what peace he had found in the Kingswood. It was not his lot, it seemed, to be at peace for long in this damnable hotbed of intrigues.


End file.
